Why Do We Allow This?

From http://www.census.gov/popest/states/tables/NST-EST2006-01.xls

Population of USA (July 1, 2006): 299,398,484

Population of Iowa: 2,982,085
Population of New Hampshire: 1,314,895

The states of Iowa and New Hampshire have a combined population of 4,296,980, that is about 1.4% of the total US population. Yet every four years, these two states are effectively permitted to decide who will be the presidential nominees for both the Republican and Democrat parties. What about the other 98.6% of us?

I apologize for belaboring this point, as I have posted on it before, but no one in either party seems to be the slightest bit concerned about this arrangement. Am I the only one who thinks this is ridiculous?

I have been voting in presidential elections since 1980. In every case, the nominee of both parties was effectively decided by the time they got to the state I was living in, and I have lived in three different states during that time.

In 1996, I was eager to see Phil Gramm run as the Republican nominee. But I never got a chance to vote for him in a primary. He dropped out after faring poorly in Iowa. The nominee that year was Bob Dole, and he waged a very ineffective campaign, losing to Clinton.

We should do one of two things:

(1) Have a nationwide primary some time in the spring, or

(2) Pick the order of how the states will vote with some random method.

If you are an American and are reading this, there is a 98.6% chance that you *don't* live in Iowa or New Hampshire and you are getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop, just like me.